This paper examines critical design, a research methodology using design to critique societal norms and values. The authors critique the existing understanding of critical design as articulated by Dunne and Raby, finding it too vague and limited. They propose a broader framework for understanding "criticality" by drawing upon critical theory and metacriticism, offering a more practical and accessible approach for human-computer interaction researchers. The paper analyzes two human-computer interaction design projects, arguing that they exemplify critical design according to their expanded definition. Finally, the authors resolve prior disagreements regarding the boundaries of critical design and its relationship to art.

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Bardzell, J., & Bardzell, S. (2013). What is “critical” about critical design? Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 3297–3306. https://doi.org/10.1145/2470654.2466451

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